California is investigating the arrival of more than a dozen migrants who were left at a Sacramento church Friday night with no prior notification. The migrants were transported from Texas to New Mexico, and then flown on a private, chartered jet to Sacramento, said Gov. Gavin Newsom. They were “dumped on the doorstep of a local church without any advance warning,” he said, the Wall Street Journal reports. The California Department of Justice is investigating the circumstances of the migrants’ trip to see if they were misled, or if any laws were broken. California Attorney General Rob Bonta said some of the migrants had paperwork issued by the state of Florida. “While we continue to collect evidence, I want to say this very clearly: State-sanctioned kidnapping is not a public policy choice,” he said.
Cecilia Flores of Sacramento’s Area Congregations Together, a community organization that has been aiding migrants, said there were 16 adults in the group. They came to the U.S. from Venezuela and Colombia. "Most of them had traveled to the U.S. separately, but they met each other in El Paso at a migrant center,” she said. According to Flores, the immigrants said they were approached outside the center by unidentified people who claimed to be contractors. They told the migrants they knew of a place that had jobs and could provide transportation to get there, Flores said. All of the migrants followed current U.S. procedures to enter the U.S. and submit themselves to border authorities, she said. They had already been processed by U.S. immigration officials and most have court dates for their asylum cases, she said. Over the past year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have bussed or flown some newly arrived immigrants from the southern border to Democratic cities and strongholds, often without advance warning or prior arrangements.